Brad;

I am a vendor with an extensive background in document capture as a
Production Manager for service bureaus and as a sales consultant.

For budgeting, I generally broke the imaging department down to 3 groups;
Labor, Equipment and Software.

How and when you obtain these three primary tools can dictate your success
or failure.

Your current assets, budget and current goal (begin with a small pilot
program) helps create your beginning workflow process.

The basic functions of doc prep, scan, index, inspection and store must all
have the same goal of retrieval.
Retrieval that is quick simple and does not entail extensive new training
for staff members of the Departments who are ultimately your 'Customers'.

Below my signature is a marketing piece from Kodak to sell their Capture Pro
product but it is well written and generic enough in it's content to be
helpful to anyone considering image capture. (This does not mean that
Kodak's products are the best for your application)
What is the best choce is always answered with "That Depends".

We are lucky today that there are many excellent scanners and image capture
software products available. I recommend that care is taken when selecting
the Dealer, VAR or 'Service Provider separate from the Brand of hardware or
software.
It is the people you select as your staff and as well as your services
providers who will help you reach your goal.

Best Regards;

John
-- 
John R Glover
707-773-1257
[log in to unmask]
www.linkedin.com/in/johnrglover

How to optimize your capture workflow



The right answers will deliver efficiency and quality—seamlessly

When designing your content management workflow, it’s a good idea to take a
close look at how you capture the content. The scanning process can be
analyzed as a chain that begins with your documents, extracts their content,
and then passes content to your business application. By optimizing each of
the links in the chain, you'll be optimizing the front end of your content
management workflow. The improved access to information can help optimize
your business productivity, as well.

The best way to achieve overall process optimization is to incorporate
best-in-class hardware, software, and service elements into your capture
solution—such as front end capture software—that enable your scanner—and
your entire adjacent workflow—to operate at the peak of its capabilities.



Be in the know by understanding the flow

You need software of some sort loaded on a host workstation to manage the
scanning process. Without it, a scanner is just a box. The right software
brings the scanner alive by opening an interactive portal to all of the
scanner’s capabilities. When done right, capture software provides a
user-friendly tool that enables you to pull content into your system in a
way that meets your requirements for later use.



Leverage the technology at hand

The right software offers opportunities for automation. Before you scan
documents, for instance, you may want to save time by preparing for the
content that will be coming in. You can create digital target folders to
allow the software to automatically sort batches of documents to logical
destinations.

While you’re scanning, the software can automatically edit the raw images
coming from the scanner, by rotating from landscape to portrait orientation
for immediate reading. Meanwhile, the software can collect data by reading
barcodes and performing zonal OCR. This data can be used for tasks as
sophisticated as populating indexes and routing images, or as simple as
telling the workflow when one multi-page document ends and a new one begins.
After you scan, you often need a desktop on the scanning workstation where
you can see the digital version of the scanned documents. You might need to
review these electronic documents, manually complete indexing information,
or perform redaction to block out sensitive information.



That’s just a brief look at what capture software can add to the process.
Now let’s look at how to choose software that makes the process easy and
productive.



Key questions to ask about any capture software:



How good are its connections?

You want the software that ties the scanner and the scanning workstation
together to be based on a robust handshake from both directions. The scanner
and the software don’t just get along; they understand each other and are
ready to work together as a team—seamlessly. No issues, patching, or
work-arounds required. Kodak Capture Pro Software is designed for
Kodak Scanners
and popular scanners from other manufacturers. Default job setups make
installation, configuration, and production start-up quick and easy. And
background batch processing allows image capture to continue during image
processing, to increase throughput even more.



How well does the software leverage my scanner’s labor-saving capabilities?

Inmost cases, your goals will include maximizing automation and minimizing
manual process steps. The more your capture solution does to minimize
document handling or operator intervention, the better. You want the
combination of scanner and software to optimize image quality and output
large volumes with speed and reliability.

Without the right setup, for example, you might be forced to scan the same
documents multiple times to output color and black-and-white images in
different file formats and to different storage locations.

With Kodak Capture Pro Software, your operators can perform this task in one
pass with any scanner that offers dual stream scanning capability.



Is the expert built into the software, or do I need one in the chair?

In the interest of throughput, you want your capture solution to remove
complexity from the operator’s job. As we saw above, enabling sophisticated
scanner features helps. It also helps to make the user interface as
intuitive as possible. Kodak Capture Pro Software is based on more than a
decade of empowering operators in settings that range from high-volume
production shops to walk-up scanner stations. Most-used tools are laid out
in a logical structure. A graphical design and easy-to-understand icons make
it simple to visualize and manage the process. Templates are provided which
include common scan job defaults and understandable options, so operators
don’t have to rely on memory or refer to a tech manual to perform tasks.



What about customization and long-term productivity?



Is the software a bottleneck or a funnel?

While there’s no magic wand you can wave over a stack of paper to transfer
it to your content management system, your capture solution can come close.
Ideally, the software prepares digital files—and metadata about these
files—in the right format for uploading to the host application without any
extra steps. For instance, the customizable capture workflow and extensive
data format support provided by Kodak Capture Pro Software help ensure a
seamless connection with your enterprise application. At the other end of
the management spectrum, the software even supports scan-to-email for a
simple, yet powerful, ad hoc document distribution solution right at the
capture workstation.



Can it make my job easier?

Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn’t be. To that
end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to
simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices
model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast
problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. You can easily
standardize on Kodak Capture Pro Software across your enterprise. A scanner
operator can open a familiar window on a workstation anywhere in your
organization and begin productive work in an instant without additional
training.



Conclusion:

These are questions to raise with your reseller or system integrator when
considering your choice of capture solution. The right answers can save you
time, labor, and give you the best return on your investment in technology
and operators.
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Brad Furlow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Greetings all,
>
> I am beginning the task to putting together a proposal for a small,
> in-house imaging group to begin scanning, detailing & organizing vital files
> from hard-copy archives and active files / records.
>
> I would love to hear from anyone who has been through the process before,
> and would be willing to share how their process and/or group is organized.
>
> I am planning to begin with a small pilot program and expand as needed to
> fulfill needs.
>
> Thanks so much!
>
> Brad Furlow
> Denver, CO
> [log in to unmask]
> 720-977-3448
>
> List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
> Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
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>

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